AOSC OS installation on Qemu/KVM is the same as installing on a regular AMD64/x86_64 system, this section is intended to aid you with configuring the virtual machine, and un-tar-ing the tarballs from outside of the virtual machine.

These two steps below replaces the "Preparing an Installation Environment", "Preparing partitions", and "Un-tar!" sections in the regular installation guide.

Forenotes§

Any commands listed below starting with a # means that the commands are run as the root user.

Prepare the VM hard disk image§

Create an empty hard disk image called aosc.img with the size of 20GiB, you will need at least 8GB to use AOSC OS for any practical functions.

# qemu-img create -f raw aosc.img 20G

Partition the aosc.img file.

# fdisk aosc.img

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.28.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Device does not contain a recognized partition table.
Created a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0xd683cfec.

Command (m for help): n
Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p): p
Partition number (1-4, default 1): 1
First sector (2048-41943039, default 2048):
Last sector, +sectors or +size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-41943039, default 41943039):

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 20 GiB.

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Syncing disks.

Show the partition table.

$ fdisk -l aosc.img
Disk aosc.img: 20 GiB, 21474836480 bytes, 41943040 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xd683cfec

Device     Boot Start      End  Sectors Size Id Type
aosc.img1        2048 41943039 41940992  20G 83 Linux

Create a loop device. In this example, /dev/loop0. Offset is start * sectorsize. And sizelimit is sectors * sectorsize:

# losetup --offset $((2048*512)) --sizelimit $((512*41940992)) --show --find aosc.img /dev/loop0

Format it:

# mkfs.ext4 /dev/loop0

Mount the loop device. For example, under /mnt:

# mount /dev/loop0 /mnt

Un-tar!§

The shell code below shows how it is been done:

$ cd /mnt
# tar pxvf /path/to/tarball.tar.xz

Now you can umount your image:

# umount ${MOUNT}
# losetup -d /dev/loop0

Bootloader!§

Here comes the most interesting part. Boot configuration is needed for the un-tar-ed system to boot and initialize.

This part require you to have a working VM. To chroot on your physical system simply won't work as expected. Before continue with installing GRUB as described in the regular installation guide, create a VM with the prepared hard disk file, and boot the VM from a LiveCD.

Now you may continue the installation in the VM with the Live system.